Jessica Chastain Interview

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Quick Bio

Actress Mindy Kaling says,“It’s Jessica Chastain’s universe, and we just live in it." And she’s not far off. Chastain, a theatrically trained ingénue and relative film newcomer, has worked on an astonishing 11 films in the past year or so.

Her latest release is Take Shelter, an apocalyptic drama about a woman watching her husband (Michael Shannon) slowly lose his mind as a storm approaches. Samantha struggles to understand his anxieties and put them on the right track, but it is the beginning of a very strange, portentous journey for both of them. Chastain talked to us about how she got through a very intense film.

Your character, Samantha, can only stand back in horror as her husband changes. She's in shock most of the time. That must have been hard to act.

Jessica Chastain: You totally hit the nail on the head. It is so hard to play that because you look at The Help or The Debt, there’s something there for me. I’m going to learn the accent, gain the weight, work on the way she walks -- you have a list of things you do when you are getting ready to put the character on.

I’m playing the character Samantha, and you can’t do any of that because the script is so delicate. It’s so subtle. If you show up with this character, then it just doesn’t work. The subtext for Samantha in the whole movie is, “What is wrong with you? Why are you being so weird?” When that’s your subtext, you know you can’t do that.

I have to do different layers of that and what that means for each scene -- "Is she bemused, irritated?" And when you shoot out of sequence, and you’ve been charting it, that’s really difficult. Before we did every scene I just said, “What just happened?” And I’d look at the book so I could know what happened right before this because I feel like Michael Shannon is the main event. He’s brilliant. I am there and I’m watching him and I have to be so subtle and sensitive to what it is, and I had to track it very carefully.

I’m stuttering even talking about it because it really was a lot of anxiety. When I first saw the film I thought that I charted OK. You never know. In the middle of the film, you don’t want to see her act crazy or look at him wrong, with cruelty. So, yes, it was tough.

As husband and wife, they are completely connected, but they're at a crossroads. What keeps them together?

JC: In the first scene of the film, you see them eating breakfast. Sometimes in a movie when you are first introduced to husband and wife, you want to know they love each other. You see them at breakfast, and they’re looking at each other in the eyes, and they’re acting like newlyweds. In our scene, they don’t look at each other once. We’re going about business, we’re talking, and he kisses me on the head. You see that they are on the same team, but there is something so real in that they are so comfortable with each other that they don’t have to show something. I feel like that if he hadn’t said what he said after the ambulance shows up -- then she leaves -- because so much of the film they’re the same team. They’re partners through this life, and she senses something is happening and he’s not telling her. Once he tells her, at that table, everything, the humiliating things, everything -- she won’t leave him no matter what. Even if she's upset, she’ll hit him or react in certain ways, but at that point, he trusts her and so she has the faith to stand by him.

The film is not about the apocalypse or schizophrenia; it’s about marriage. Marriage and faith. Samantha and Curtis are an example of having faith in someone. He has faith in her that he can tell her what no one else knows, and she has the faith in him that he is a good person even in those difficult scenes at the end. Faith till the end.

One thing I was nervous about: There are certain Hollywood films about schizophrenia or the end of the world, and all the bells and whistles about telling that story. Jeff told me that it wasn’t that. He said the most important moment in the film was the look between them at the very end. In that scene, there is a look. If that look doesn’t work, the whole film doesn’t work. That’s great! Any other director would say, "I know what this film is,” and he would make the obvious story and the end would be very different. But he wanted to make something subtle that meant more than on the page.

How do you connect to her anxiety?

JC: I always say I am a realist, and my mom says, "No, you just have anxiety." I was invited to go to Paris last year for a fashion show. I was shocked. They flew me and friend there, and they put me up in the Crillon Hotel, and it was beautiful, but the whole time I was like, "Jessica, don’t get used to this!"

If I like this too much and it goes away, I will be one of those crazy actresses in the lobby of the Crillon, saying, "Please, someone, put me in a suite." When something happens, I always check myself and know it’s going to go away. So be prepared for it. This is a tough business for actors who are sensitive. If you try to hold on to things, you’ll go crazy.

Would you say Take Shelter the hardest film you've done?

JC: Yes. We had no money, and we filmed some scenes in one shot. So we would have three takes, one shot, nothing to cut to.

And Mike and I would go to the next scene and wonder if they got it. And there was no coverage. It really was a stressful event.

There is often a delicate balance between fragility and strength in the roles you play.

JC: There is a great actress who does this so well, Isabelle Huppert. I’ve found with strong women and men, even Mike, you see him onstage, and he has this presence, but when you get to know him, he is so soft and has a gentle heart and this childlike beauty in him. A lot of people have both, and watching Isabelle Huppert in Time of the Wolf or The Piano Teacher, she has this strength that she won’t show anything, but it’s because she is so vulnerable.

I’m inspired by people who are so sensitive and vulnerable that they try to cover it up. It’s like Hamlet’s “She doth protest too much.” When you act strong and show that side, it’s probably because you are probably the most sensitive person there. Those are the characters I love who have two opposing ideas.

I’m very sensitive in real life. I cannot not cry if someone around me is crying. I will start to cry if someone is crying, even if it’s not appropriate. I have that thing in me, a weakness or sensitivity.

I can understand Rachel in The Debt. She’s this tough woman, but I believe all tough women are trying to hide something the opposite. Same with men. If you look at the men I’ve worked with -- Michael Shannon, Al Pacino -- they are such softies...

Tom Hardy, this dude, but total softie. Perhaps I wonder if people who are the most nervous about their vulnerability cover it up with muscle, or their idea of what strength is.

As an actor you get to explore all kinds of psychological conditions. That must be fascinating.

JC: I feel like I am a student. That’s why I love being an actor. I get to learn something else all the time. It’s about connecting with people and learning about women I didn’t know. I look at Rachel for The Debt, and she’s a real woman, even though she’s fictional. But having played her and shared her thoughts and having gone through what her family went through in the Holocaust, the survivor skills that she has, and what that leads to, absolutely. My characters' psychologies and histories, where they come from, it's devastating. Celia Foot from The Help, leaving her was... It’s heartbreak every time I have to let one of them go.